CHAPTER V

CASTLETOWN AND THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE ISLAND

It still remains to explore the south side of the island, commencing again at Peel. Here the chief interest centres in Castletown, with its famous Castle Rushen; in the splendid stretch of coast between Peel and Port Erin; and in the cliff scenery of Spanish Head and the Calf. The direct road from Peel to Castletown, turning off from the Douglas road at St. John's, and proceeding by way of Foxdale, is a dull affair at best, and is spoilt at Foxdale itself by the untidy presence of lead-mines. Beyond Foxdale, indeed, the landscape improves as we skirt the east slopes of South Barrule, which have been covered of late years with extensive fir-plantings, and begin to descend the hill, with the sea splendidly conspicuous in front.

A much better road is to take the lane due south from Peel that skirts the head of Glen Maye, and winds up to the pass on the west of South Barrule. This, of course, is a rougher route, and involves much additional hill. Better still for the pedestrian is a composite, roundabout way that follows the grand coast-line more or less closely to Port Erin, and bends thence to the east for Castletown. Two days may easily be spent on this last journey by sleeping at Port Erin, and spending the bulk of the following day in a leisurely exploration of the Calf.

From Peel the coast-line may be followed the whole distance to the mouth of Glen Maye; but the path, so far as it exists, is in places rather giddy, and approaches unpleasantly near to the edge of the cliff. We believe that it is examined every year before the beginning of the "season" to make sure that it has not slipped away in the winter months into the gulf below. All inland view is at first shut out by the huge green slopes of Peel Hill on our left; but presently, as we double Contrary Head, the fine southern range of mountain comprising Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa (1,449 feet), the Carnanes (1,000 feet), and Bradda Head (768 feet), is seen dropping to the sea, more directly and more abruptly than perhaps any other hills to the south of the Border (in Scotland it is matched on the southern coast of Mull), except perhaps Penmaenmawr and the north coast of Exmoor. The view hence, looking south, is impressive, or even deserves the epithet "grand"; at no other spot in the island do mountain and sea group in a single picture in such intimate proximity as here. At Glen Maye the line of cliff is abruptly interrupted by the little stream that here descends from Glen Rushen. The best of this glen is probably where it debouches on the sea; higher up, however, it becomes wooded, and exhibits a small waterfall, but is apt, perhaps, in "tripper-time" to be somewhat unpleasantly popular. At the head of the glen we regain the main road, by which we might have travelled, had we liked, directly from Peel. Passing the hamlet of Dalby, and always looking down on the sea on our right, we come shortly to a fork half a mile beyond the church, where a lane drops down due south (the right-hand branch of the fork) into the hollow of Dalby Lhag. At the bottom of this is a tiny rill pleasantly hidden among trees. We are now virtually at sea-level, but in the course of the next mile we rise nearly 800 feet. The ascent is by a kind of rocky staircase, in which the bare ribs of the earth have been stripped of their scanty covering of soil. At the top of this, where we join a better lane that comes over Cronk Fedjag, we strike away to the right, over high grass pastures, to the fairly obvious summit of Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa: the lane goes down to Port St. Mary (with a turn to the right for Port Erin), keeping the range of mountain between the sea and itself. On Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa and the neighbouring ridge of the Carnanes--the two are only severed by the sudden notch of the Slack--those who are free to wander may well wander a summer day, or bask a whole morning in the sunlight, stretched out on the scented turf,

While the dreaming man, Half conscious of the soothing melody, With sidelong eye looks out upon the scene.

It is astonishing that a hill-range of such minor elevation should clothe itself in attributes of such really mountainous dignity. From the end of the Carnanes we drop cautiously to the sea at Fleswick Bay, whence those who are weary of much up-and-down may soon make their way to Port Erin or Port St. Mary. Those, on the contrary, who are still eager for the hills may yet, if they like, make another pretty climb by scrambling up and over Bradda Head.

Port Erin and Port St. Mary, though only a mile apart, are almost as different from one another--though, of course, in a different way--as are Lynton and Lynmouth, in Devonshire, or any other famous topographical twins. Those who prefer a watering-place that is almost wholly watering-place, and not yet spoilt by extravagant building (though the hands that direct its destinies had better call a halt); who are content to be included in a definite bay that is bounded by definite cliffs; and who are willing to look westward over unlimited space, in which the sun sinks magnificently in his "ocean-bath," will get what they like at Port Erin. Those, on the other hand, who like to face eastward, and to vary the monotony of the seascape by distant lines of low coast; who dislike to be cooped in a narrow space; and who ask the stronger local colour of a busy little port, will probably turn to Port St. Mary. _Stat suus cuique honor_: each may be praised without dispraising its rival; though the writer, were he asked, would find little difficulty in giving his casting vote between the two. In any case it is intolerable that the little Manx railway, when rebuilding Port St. Mary Station, should have built so conspicuous an erection in such hideous red-brick. They have done the same at Douglas and Peel. When will builders come to realize that red-brick of all complexions is wholly out of place in a land of grey and green?

Castletown, till 1862, was officially the capital of Man, and is still far the least "developed" of all its four principal towns. It is simply, in fact, a small, quiet country town, even less spoilt for visitors than the inland parts of Peel; though Peel, of course, exhibits, in its peerless St. Patrick's Isle, features of picturesqueness that we shall seek for in Castletown in vain. Castletown, no doubt, would be big and ugly if it could; and by making golf-links at Derby Haven it has certainly given hostages to fortune. After all, there is nothing to see in the place save Castle Rushen, which is principally keep, with a narrow ward, and an _enceinte_ wall and ditch that surround the whole. So narrow a ward, and a keep so disproportionately big, can be matched perhaps only at Middleham, in Yorkshire--once the home of the "King-Maker"--where the keep is late Norman, and the _enceinte_ fourteenth century. At Castletown, it is asserted, no part of the existing structure dates back earlier than the fourteenth, or at earliest the thirteenth, century; though the castle itself is said to have been founded--the account is perhaps mythical--by King Guthred the Dane in 947. The keep, moreover, though so-called in all the guide-books, is not really a keep at all--not a single solid tower, that is, in the sense of Middleham Castle, or, to take more familiar instances, in the sense of Rochester, Dover, or London. On the contrary it is really a minute inner ward surrounded by an _enceinte_ of quite disproportionate height. Formerly, under the rule of the house of Stanley, it served, like the Tower and Windsor Castle, for castle and palace alike; after that the place was a prison; and now it is dismantled, save for a handful of rooms, some of which shelter the Manx Museum. Most of the apartments are gloomy enough, and one is glad to escape from them back into the sunlight: the great slabs of slate, however, that serve for floor or ceiling--some of them measure 12 feet in length--are surely without parallel elsewhere. The drawing-room, which is the biggest room in the castle, has now an interesting collection of Manx antiquities--_e.g._, old rushlight-holders, and the ancient Bishop's mace; but the object that strikes one most with amazement is the splendid skeleton of an Irish elk--an animal, of course, that has long since been extinct--which was found some sixteen years ago in a marl-pit near St. John's. This is said to be complete, and measures about 10 feet across the antlers--sufficient indication of its general gigantic size.

The Isle of Man, as belonging to the Stanleys, was pertinaciously Royalist in the great Civil War; and hither retired James, the seventh Earl of Derby, on July 30, 1644, after the crushing defeat at Marston Moor on the previous July 2 had finally shattered the cause of the King in the North. Here he resided with his family in Castle Rushen for the next six years; and well would it have been for him had he resided here till the end. On June 16, 1650, however, Charles II. landed in the Firth of Cromarty to commence the new campaign that was destined to end so disastrously at Worcester; and in the August of the following year Derby, in his turn, set foot again on English soil at Wyre Water, in Lancashire, having been selected by Charles in the previous year to command the Royalist levies out of Lancashire and Cheshire. On sailing for this expedition, from which he was fated never to return, he left his wife behind him at Castle Rushen, under the care of William Christian, who commanded the insular forces. The Countess was the famous Charlotte de la Trémoille, daughter of Claude de la Trémoille, Duc de Thouars, and was lineally descended, on her mother's side, from the great Dutch patriot, William the Silent. Already, in the course of the great Civil War, she had distinguished herself by the defence of Lathom House, in Lancashire, during the siege of which she had "rejected with scorn all proposals for surrender, declaring that she and her children would fire the castle and perish in the flames rather than yield." The fortunes of her husband need not now be further followed, save briefly to record that he was beheaded by the Parliament at Bolton on October 15, 1651, having been captured near Nantwich whilst trying to make his escape alone after the defeat at Worcester. The unfortunate Countess, on hearing of his arrest, at once despatched overtures to England proposing the surrender of the island in the hope of saving his life. Whether the proposal was scouted, or arrived too late, the Earl, we have seen, was put to death; and it is said that the first intimation that his unhappy wife received of it was a curt and brutal sentence (though it may not have been meant as such)--"the late Earl of Derby"--in a letter from Colonel Duckenfield that was delivered to her on October 29, calling on her to surrender Castle Rushen.

The Parliamentary troops had landed on the island two days previously, it is practically certain--though the point has been disputed--by the treachery of William Christian. The distracted Countess was apparently at first for holding out, but finally surrendered on November 3. She ultimately died at Knowsley, in 1664, and was buried near her husband in the parish church of Ormskirk. She had lived just long enough, however, to see summary vengeance executed on the traitor by her son, the eighth Earl. Christian, of course, was included in the general Act of Indemnity that alone rendered tolerable the return of Charles to England in 1660. Derby, however, was lord in Man, and claimed to exercise there peculiar sovereign powers in his own right. Christian was arrested, but refused to plead, and could not thus technically be brought to trial. "The Governor requested the deemsters and the House of Keys to inform him what the laws of the island provided should be done in the case of a prisoner refusing to plead. The reply was that the life and property of the recusant were at the absolute disposal of the lord of the island." In England the old remedy in such a case was pressing to death (the _peine forte et dure_), but the goods of the prisoner were not forfeited. It is said to have been for this very reason (that his property might descend to his heir), that Walter Calverley refused to plead when indicted at York for the murder of his children in 1605. On December 29 the deemster pronounced sentence of death on Christian, and four days later he was shot at Hango Hill on the seashore on the way to Derby Haven, and, roughly, a mile to the east of Castle Rushen. The spot is almost exactly opposite King William's College, and is marked by the slight ruins of a blockhouse that was built by the seventh Earl, and by the site of an ancient burial-ground. He was buried at Malew Church, as recorded in the parish register--the last two sentences in terrible opposition: "Mr. William Christian of Ronaldsway, late Receiver, was shot to death at Hangoe Hill, on January 2. He died most penitently and most courageously, made a good end, prayed earnestly, made an excellent speech, and the next day was buried in the chancel of Malew." The character of William Christian has been very variously estimated, but the islanders regarded him as a patriot martyr, who died for defending certain of their rights against the encroachments of the reigning house. "Baase Illiam Dhone" (The Death of Brown-haired William) "dwells on the retribution that befell the families of those who were responsible for his execution." On the other hand, it seems certain that Christian was accused in 1658 of having embezzled extensive revenues of the then sequestrated bishopric; and whether guilty of this or not--he was never brought to trial--he certainly fled to England, and this presupposes his guilt. Popular judgment and critical history thus often fall at loggerheads; Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who was beheaded at Pontefract in 1322, was honoured after his death almost as though a saint--Leland, writing in the time of Henry VIII., speaks of "the Hil, where the goode Duke of _Lancastre_ was beheddid"--whilst the _Dictionary of National Biography_ can find nothing better to say of him than that "despite his tragic end, it is difficult to say anything favourable of Thomas of Lancaster."

In what has been said we have endeavoured to treat generally of all that is really best worth seeing in Man, dwelling briefly on those topics, whether of history or topography, that seem really of most validity, and passing in silence those aspects of the island--luckily few and often temporary--that appear to the writer not in harmony with its true and permanent charms, and in some cases even repellent. It would be pleasant in conclusion, did only space permit, to dig down a little deeper into the treasures of its place-names and local traditions, and to review the many quaint notices of its history and curiosities that are scattered up and down in the pages of old writers. It is not clear that Camden had ever visited Man, though he gives a short account of it at the end of his _Magna Britannia_. The natives, he observes, lived chiefly on oat-bread; whilst both the sheep and cattle were smaller than in England, "nor have they such stately fronts." Part of his description is embodied in a letter that was sent him by the Bishop, John Merrick. "The women," says this letter, "whenever they go out of their own houses, as if mindful of mortality wrap themselves up in the linen that is to serve for their shroud." Similarly, the late Augustus J. C. Hare says that a married woman in Northumberland, "in moments of gloom," will take out and try on her grave-clothes, which she always procures as part of her trousseau, "and find comfort in the inspection of the mournful linen." "Such women," continues the Bishop, "as are capitally convicted are sewed up in a sack and thrown from a rock into the sea. The natives in general are clear from stealing and begging from door to door, extremely religious, and to a man exact in their conformity to the church of England." Preaching in Jersey, in 1692, the learned Canon Falk thus boasted, in similar strain, that that island did not then contain a single dissenter. Giraldus Cambrensis, as cited by Camden, has a somewhat amusing story. The island lies, he tells us, "in the midway between the north of England and Ireland, occasioning no small dispute among the ancients to which of the two it belonged. The dispute was at last thus settled. As venomous creatures were found upon trial to live here, it was unanimously judged to the Britans." Ireland, it is well known, now possesses no poisonous reptiles: they were banished from its precincts by St. Patrick.

Camden, very shrewdly, makes the further observation that "the natives, however, in language and manners come nearer the Irish, but with a small mixture of Norwegian." This is curiously confirmed by the modern study of place-names, which indicates a considerable Norse settlement. Other place-names are strongly Erse in character--_e.g._, the familiar Balla (in Ballasalla, Ballabooye, Ballaquine, etc., and ninety-three others). Slieau, as a generic name for mountain (Slieau Ruy, Slieau Ree, etc.), and Glen for a mountain-ravine. "The map of the island," says the late Canon Isaac Taylor, "contains about 400 names, of which about 20 per cent. are English, 21 per cent. are Norwegian, and 59 per cent. are Celtic. These Celtic names are all of the most characteristic Erse type." The old Manx language, in fact, is still not altogether dead, though one no longer hears it spoken as Welsh is spoken in Wales, or as Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland. Gough, in his additions to Camden, prints two specimens of this old tongue, though the present writer will not vouch for their orthography. The charitable disposition of the people, he says, "is marked by this proverb: _Tra tayn derrey vought cooney lesh bought alley, ta fee heme garaghtee_: _i.e._, When one poor man relieves another, God Himself laughs outright for joy." "It is curious to observe," adds Canon Isaac Taylor--if we may revert for the moment to the subject of place-names--"that the names which denote places of Christian worship are all Norwegian; they are an indication of the late date at which heathenism must have prevailed, and help to explain the fact that so many heathen superstitions and legends still linger in the island."

INDEX

The principal reference is given first after names.

Andreas, 21

"Baase Illiam Dhone," 59

Ballaugh, 18

Baregarrow, 31

Barrule, N., 6, 18, 31, 44

" S., 31, 48

Beinn-y-Phott, 38, 18, 37

Bishop's Court, 30, 29

Bradda Head, 8, 31, 49, 51

Bride, 21

Calf, The, 48, 49

Carnanes, The, 49, 51

Carraghan, 37

Castle Rushen, 53, 28

Castletown, 53, 10

Christian, William, 56, 57

Clagh Ouyre, 18, 38

Cobham, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, 13

Colden, 18, 20, 37

Contrary Head, 49

Corna Dale, 43, 44

Cronk Fedjag, 51

Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa, 51, 38, 49

Cronk Urleigh, 31

Curraghs, The, 21

Dalby, 50

" Lhag, 50

Deemsters, The, 23, 22

Derby, Charlotte de la Trémoille, Countess of, 56

Derby Haven, 53

Derby, James, Earl of, 55

Dhoon Glen, 45

Douglas, 7, 10

Eagle Mount, 31

Fleswick Bay, 51

Foxdale, 48

Glen Audyn, 39

" Helen, 19

" Laxey, 45

" Maye, 50

" Mooar, 36

" Roy, 45

" Rushen, 50

Great Wheel, The, 46

Greeba Castle, 19

" Mill, 18

" Mountain, 18

Guthred the Dane, King, 54

Hall Caine, Mr., 19

Hango Hill, 58

House of Keys, 23

Injebreck, 37, 7

Irish Elk, 55

John, Presbyter, 44

Jurby, 21

Keeil Woirrey, 43

King William's College, 58

Kirk Braddon, 21, 42

" Maughold, 8, 21, 40

Kirkmichael, 8, 18, 25, 42

Laxey, 45, 36, 39

Le Scroop, Sir William, 26

Levinz, Bishop Baptist, 27

Lhargey Ruy, 18

Malew Church, 58

Manx arms, 26

" Crosses, 41, 40, 21, 29

" Museum, 54

Merrick, Bishop John, 60

Neb, River, 10, 19

Peel, 10, 7, 8

" Bay, 11

" Cathedral, 21

" Hill, 49

Port Erin, 52, 7

" St. Mary, 52

Pre-conquest architecture, 11

Ramsey, 39, 7, 18

Reneuriling, Hill of, 31

Rhenass Fall, 20

" River, 35

Round Tower, 11

Russel, Bishop Thomas, 30

Russel, Bishop William, 30

Rutter, Bishop Samuel, 12

Saint Germain's Cathedral, 12

" John's, 18, 22, 55

" Maughold's Head, 40

" Patrick's Island, 11, 8, 10

" Trinian's Chapel, 19

Sart Fell, 20, 31, 35

Slack, The, 51

Slieau Dhoo, 31

" Froghane, 31

" Ruy, 18

Snaefell, 33, 7, 18, 24, 31, 32, 36, 38, 46

Sodor and Man, Bishopric of, 30

Spanish Head, 48

Spectre "Dog," 14

Stanley, Sir John, 26

Stanley, Sir Thomas, 13

Sulby, 18

" Glen, 31, 32, 36

Tholt-y-Wilt, 36

Tynwald Hill, 22, 31

Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 25

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1911